Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of
pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any
satisfactory haven. The summer in these latitudes is a campaign of
sentiment and a season, for the most part, of restlessness and
discontent. We grow now in hot-houses roses which, in form and
color, are magnificent, and appear to be full of passion; yet one
simple June rose of the open air has for the Young Lady, I doubt not,
more sentiment and suggestion of love than a conservatory full of
them in January. And this suggestion, leavened as it is with the
inconstancy of nature, stimulated by the promises which are so often
like the peach-blossom of the Judas-tree, unsatisfying by reason of
its vague possibilities, differs so essentially from the more limited
and attainable and home-like emotion born of quiet intercourse by the
winter fireside, that I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as if some
spell had been broken by the transition of her life from in-doors to
out-doors. Her secret, if secret she has, which I do not at all
know, is shared by the birds and the new leaves and the blossoms on
the fruit trees. If we lived elsewhere, in that zone where the poets
pretend always to dwell, we might be content, perhaps I should say
drugged, by the sweet influences of an unchanging summer; but not
living elsewhere, we can understand why the Young Lady probably now
looks forward to the hearthstone as the most assured center of
enduring attachment.
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